Lodovico Carracci, The Return from the Flight into Egypt

1600
Oil on canvas
Private collection

In The Vision of Theophilus the young Jesus points to the water, as we see here, and it miraculously turns into a boat. That transformation would be hard to put into a still picture, so Carracci and others signal the miraculousness of the boat's appearance by including an angel. The well-muscled boatman is also traditional in images of this type, as is the placement of the child in his mother's arms. (Actually, the Theophilus says she was carrying him "on my arms"; but it also says he was three years and a half years old, which would make him quite a lapful.)

Zuffi (112) points out that this is certainly an image of the return from, not the flight into Egypt as it is sometimes labeled.

Read more about images of the return from Egypt.

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Source: this page at Wikimedia Commons.